It’ s like being lost
in the forest, hungry, with a
plump live chicken in your cradling
arms: you want to savage the bird,
but you also want the eggs.
You go weak on your legs.
What’ s worse, what you need
most is the companionship,
but you’ re too hungry to know that.
That is something you only know after
you’ ve been lost a lot and always,
Don't say Sir Pigeon in his cobalt bonnet.
Don't find among your notes
jottings on duvets and blizzards and the page
unwalked acrossblack missives of girlhood
must be sent off and do not claim the furnace
of the universe is powered by human screams.
When the dark turns dark
or when the bullet lifts a scalp,
it is enough to know the lover feels the slap
In prayer:
quiet opening,
my artery is a thin
shadow on paper —
margin of long grass,
ruderal hair, sister to this
not yet part of our bodies
your lyric corpus of seed
in rough drafts of pine ash,
chaogao or grass calligraphy
in rough drafts of pine ash —
your lyric corpus of seed
not yet part of our bodies:
ruderal hair, sister to this
margin of long grass,
shadow on paper,
my artery is a thin
quiet opening
in prayer.
Imperfect things are always —
it seems — a wave
of some wand away
from perfection.
They’ re there — the toady
and the bumpy
with warts — for turning
into princes. Even pumpkins —
propped upon
piles of lumber —
idle like unupholstered
carriages up on cinder
blocks. But a trifle’ s potential —
its capacity for alchemy, actually —
can leave you longing
for lead. So many things
you think are Prince Hals
are really just kings.
Diarrhea: what nobody likes,
though a word the French love to pronounce.
They surround it with lips and tongue;
it pleases, like saying cellar door does.
Once I gave a pair of tweezers
to an au pair girl who couldn’ t extract
a splinter from her foot. It was a pleasure
for both of us to see that little thing come out.
Must Sean Penn always look like he’ s squeezing
the last drops out of a sponge and the sponge
is his face? Even the back of his head grimaces.
Just the pressure in his little finger alone
could kill a gorilla. Remember that kid
whose whole trick was forcing blood into his head
until he looked like the universe’ s own cherry bomb
so he’ d get the first whack at the piñata?
He’ s grown up to straighten us all out
about weapons of mass destruction
but whatever you do, don’ t ding his car door with yours.
Tell me not in mormonful numbers
“Life is but an empty dream!”
To a student of the slumbers
Things are never what they seem.
Life is yearning and suppression;
Life is that to be enjoyed;
Puritanical discretion
Was not spoke by Dr. Freud.
These are the saddest of possible words:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double —
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
We don’ t get any too much light;
It’ s pretty noisy, too, at that;
The folks next door stay up all night;
There’ s but one closet in the flat;
The rent we pay is far from low;
Our flat is small and in the rear;
But we have looked around, and so
We think we’ ll stay another year.
Will you read my little pome,
O you girls returnèd home
From a summertime of sport
At the Jolliest Resort,
From a Heated Term of joys
Far from urban dust and noise?
You I speak to in this rhyme,
You have had a Glorious Time
Swimming, golfing, bridging, dancing,
Riding, tennising, romancing,
On the springboard, on the raft —
You’ ve been often photographed.
